‘I never thought of that ! ‘
‘Give it your attention now.’
‘Those Argus-Reminder hounds stick at nothing.’
‘The sky is notoriously their limit.’
‘Did you tell me Ginger had done time?’
‘I said he was always in the hands of the police on Boat Race night. And, of course, on Rugger night.’
‘What’s Rugger night?’
‘The night of the annual Rugby football encounter between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Many blithe spirits get even more effervescent then than when celebrating the boat race. Ginger was one of them.’
‘He really got jugged?’
‘Invariably. His practice of pinching policemen’s helmets insure this. Released next morning on payment of a fine, but definitely after spending the night in a dungeon cell.’
There was no doubt that I had impressed on her the gravity of the situation. She gave a sharp cry like that of a stepped-on dachshund, and her face took on the purple tinge it always assumes in moments of strong emotion.
‘This does it! ‘
‘Fairly serious, I agree.’
‘Fairly serious! The merest whisper of such goings-on will be enough to alienate every voter in the town. Ginger’s done for.’
‘You don’t think they might excuse him because his blood was young at the time?’
‘Not a hope. They won’t be worrying about his ruddy blood. You don’t know what these blighters here are like. Most of them are chapel folk with a moral code that would have struck Torquemada as too rigid.’
‘Torquemada? ‘
‘The Spanish Inquisition man.’
‘Oh, that Torquemada?’
‘How many Torquemadas did you think there were?’
I admitted that it was not a common name, and she carried on.
‘We must act! ‘
‘But how?’
‘Or, rather, you must act. You must go to this man and reason with him.’ I h’med a bit at this. I doubted whether a fellow with Bingley’s lust for gold would listen to reason.
‘What shall I say?’
‘You’ll know what to say.’
‘Oh, shall I?’
‘Appeal to his better instincts.’
‘He hasn’t got any.’
‘Now don’t make difficulties, Bertie. That’s your besetting sin, always arguing. You want to help Ginger, don’t you? ‘
‘Of course I do.’
‘Very well, then.’
When an aunt has set her mind on a thing, it’s no use trying to put in a nolle prosequi. I turned to the door. Half way there a thought occurred to me. I said:
‘How about Jeeves?’
‘What about him?’
‘We ought to spare his feelings as far as possible. I repeatedly warned him that that club book was highlevel explosive and ought not to be in existence. What if it fell into the wrong hands, I said, and he said it couldn’t possibly fall into the wrong hands. And now it has fallen into about the wrongest hands it could have fallen into. I haven’t the heart to say “I told you so” and watch him writhe with shame and confusion. You see, up till now Jeeves has always been right. His agony on finding that he has at last made a floater will be frightful. I shouldn’t wonder if he might not swoon. I can’t face him. You’ll have to tell him.’
‘Yes, I’ll do it.’
‘Try to break it gently.’
‘I will. When you were listening outside, did you get this man Bingley’s address? ‘
‘I got it.’
‘Then off you go.’
So off I went.
CHAPTER Eleven
Considering how shaky was his moral outlook and how marked his tendency to weave low plots at the drop of a hat, you would have expected Bingley’s headquarters to have been one of those sinister underground dens lit by stumps of candles stuck in the mouths of empty beer bottles such as abound, I believe, in places like Whitechapel and Limehouse. But no. Number 5 Ormond Crescent turned out to be quite an expensive looking joint with a nice little bit of garden in front of it well supplied with geraniums, bird baths and terracotta gnomes, the sort of establishment that might have belonged to a blameless retired Colonel or a saintly stockbroker. Evidently his late uncle hadn’t been just an ordinary small town grocer, weighing out potted meats and raisins to a public that had to watch the pennies, but something on a much more impressive scale. I learned later that he had owned a chain of shops, one of them as far afield as Birmingham, and why the ass had gone and left his money to a chap like Bingley is more than I can tell you, though the probability is that Bingley, before bumping him off with some little-known Asiatic poison, had taken the precaution of forging the will.